84 Our Farming. 



depression, about two rods apart. Let me advise about draining 

 all such places as we have been writing about, that you get your 

 tiles too large rather than too small, if you intend to put in tillage 

 crops. Water standing a short time on a growing crop in hot 

 weather usually ruins it. The coating of mud deposited on the 

 leaves is almost as sure death in some soils as the standing under 

 water. I sometimes take a hand force pump, and water in a 

 barrel cart, and wash leaves of potatoes as soon as drains take the 

 water down and before the mud on leaves dries much. I have 

 saved a crop in that way. It is not usually, but once or twice in 

 a season, that we get showers that will fill these hollows. Here 

 they generally come in June, and if we get by them we are all 

 right. Now, if you will look again at plan of farm, you will 

 notice some dotted lines on south side of road running diagonally. 

 N was a small swamp on neighbor's farm. O was one on my 

 land, and the dotted lines show you the natural direction the 

 water took in working across my field. P is the outlet of the 

 drainage system of this lot. There is quite a depression at O ; it 

 is about four feet lower than the land in centre of lot 5 . Of 

 course, this means that O was a cat swamp, as it had a clay 

 bottom and no natural drainage. Previous owners of the farm 

 had plowed out a sort of ditch, so the water ran off before it spread 

 over more than about half an acre. The same syphon tile artist 

 had put in a line of two-inch tiles the year before I came here, 

 which never did any good. Water stood at O practically all 

 summer, although it was a larger swamp in winter. The natural 

 flow of the old barnyard for forty years had been into it, and no 

 one attempted to go against nature in this line. They let it go. 

 And I am inclined to think the more went, the better some of the 

 tenants liked it. One said to me, when I spoke of draining it : 

 " I wouldn't. It is so handy to let stock down there to drink." 

 Mercy ! But doubtless that, along with the starvation, had helped 

 them to an income early in the spring hides to sell. But I do 

 not know as it was any worse than the water in the house well. 

 For forty years, or more, they had plowed around this hole. The 

 day had not arrived for any better farming. Well, the day did 

 not arrive for some years when I thought I could afford to drain 

 this place. In the summer there was only about a quarter of an 

 acre of waste land. The distance from O to P w r as 60 rods. To 

 buy tiles and lay drain as deep as we must through bank would 

 cost some $50. When we got ahead enough so it had to go any- 

 way, as a matter of health and looks, whether the money invest- 

 ment paid or not, we went at it in the winter. I don't think I 

 ever did anything that the older men thought quite so foolish. 

 $50 for a quarter acre of land, with land worth $40 an acre ! But I 

 had a good deal of confidence in my own judgment by this 

 time and went ahead. The land was drained by mains running 

 in the same direction, but I put in a special through line of 



